Proposed ‘Hydrogen Car Hydrogen Storage Compressed Container Performance Improvement Process’
High performance, light weight, various form production possible
“Will be applied to future hydrogen cars”
[December 9, 2015]
Kim Gyeong-deok (26, 2nd term of master's degree program) at the YU Graduate School of Textile Engineering and Technology received the grand prize at the '2015 College (Graduate School) Student Idea Contest'.
This contest hosted by the Korea Textile Development Institute was made to be used for the development of the textile industry by finding creative ideas and attracting the interest of college and graduate school students in textile technologies. This year, the contest was on ideas in corporate support capacity improvement sectors such as technological and commercialization support for the activation of the materials and convergence technologies using smart, highly functional and super textiles, while also pioneering markets for the textile industry.
After the first document review and second presentation review since accepting ideas in August, Kim Gyeong-deok who proposed the 'Hydrogen Car Hydrogen Storage Compressed Container Performance Improvement Process' won the grand prize. Mr. Kim received a cash prize of 3 million won and will receive the benefit of being exempted from document reviews when applying to the Korea Textile Development Institute for employment.
The technology proposed by Kim is an idea to improve the performance of pressure containers that can withstand higher pressures than other products in order to bring about early commercialization of hydrogen fuel cells.
Kim said, "Instead of the hydrogen storage pressure container produced with steel and carbon fiber materials, I proposed a new process that can produce container pressures that can withstand much higher pressures than in the past." He added, "When produced with this performance improvement method, it will be possible to make the product light-weight and it will also be possible to freely form the container for efficient use."
Hydrogen fuel cell automobiles, which are environment-friendly and cheap, is expected to take up a considerable portion of the future automobile market, so Kim's idea is receiving more attention.
Kim says that as a student of textile engineering he is very interested in automobile materials, and stated, "Though hydrogen fuel cell automobiles are not highly commercialized yet, I believe that it will lead the future automobile market. I came up with this idea based on this and I think that it has sufficient market value." He added, "Though it might not be possible to materialize on this idea right now, by enhancing technological perfection when the market becomes bigger and automation is achieved, it will be possible to mount on hydrogen fuel cell automobiles."
Meanwhile, the Korea Textile Development Institute is planning to utilize ideas from this contest and conduct R&D using various methods.
